We'll Wake And Open Up Our Eyes
by Ember Nickel
Summary: "Easier? As if I'd need defending from my dear old granny?" asks Yunri. "Only she's been in the ground nine planecycs, I think I can stand her whining about how I'm pouring the tea all wrong." Fathers and daughters, who aren't the first to feel just so.


Thanks to got_quiet for betaing!

* * *

Those who journeyed to Lor San Tekka's steadport might have noticed that he kept a holochessboard with him. It was not a null-grav fit for space travel, but instead, weighty and dignified, ready to lend beauty to whichever planet he found himself on. Carved by some of the finest artisans in the city of his birth, the exterior was beset with elaborate figurines. Meanwhile, advanced lumintech devices glowed within the inner ring.

It would be easy for a casual observer to conclude that San Tekka had the opportunity to play and compete regularly. But this was far from the case. The board was not a battleground for fair competition, so much as it was a symbol of his homeworld. Each distinguished visitor who wanted to coo over it would admire the woodwork. Some might offer to play, perhaps over drinks, or conversation, or both, and it was a hard-won chance to lull them into camaraderie with tales of his adventures. How the flourishing of democracy had led the newest generation of luminists to discover their miniaturization devices, and how the ancient traditional monarchy supported the same forests that had guarded their palace for centuries. It would not do to compete too hard, not against the locals he was there to impress, and day by day he played ever more the part of the amateur, feigning surprise whenever he was defeated.

This was the life of the Cultural Ambassador. Not that he served any _political_ purpose, of course. Alderaan had its representative in the Senate, and a fine representative they had, too. But a planet full of music, of art, of life and history and tradition and wonder had grown discontent with the centralization of politics being its only official channel to the rest of the galaxy. Increasingly, there was a push to send delegates elsewhere, on unofficial business to strengthen Alderaan's ties to other worlds one at a time-and hopefully give them a taste of Central culture.

Not that Lor could have ever called Miletin backwoods, of course. Not after living on the moon for four planecycs and navigating its mazes of pipes, of marvelling at all the filters and dams the Miletinners had so elaborately preserved for generations to rely on their own water supply. Not after meeting Cosshu, who labored at a shipyard. Though she was some years older than him, and unimpressed by stories of hyperspace travel, still she took her duty to caucus for the First Scribe just as seriously as Lor did an Alderaanian senatorial election, and they filled each other in on local politics with both fear and fervor. By the time Lor journeyed onto his next ambassadorial post, it was as Cosshu's husband.

* * *

Eith San Tekka, daughter of Lor and Cosshu, heard much of Miletin and Alderaan from her parents' stories growing up. Her father told her of Alderaan's great palaces, of pillars that soared high into the clouds and columns that might dazzle her with their handiwork. Her mother told her of the simple yet overflowing bonds of loyalty she had forged on Miletin, of welders who had done their kinswomen great service in drought planecycs and fishmongers who had once cheated Cosshu's friends out of an honest bargain.

But when she came to the moon, none of these people were there to hound her, to deal vengeance for past grudges or to embroil her in small talk. A few, perhaps, heard the accents of unfamiliar worlds in her voice and stayed away, some out of prejudice, and others out of fear. The galaxy was colder day by day under the Empire's thumb. Many, though, saw her as just another Militinner and gave her free run of the place, and if she wanted to spend the day exploring an aquifer or climbing to some of the forested steadports, she had every right.

It was on Alderaan that she was expected to sit still and shake hands, being trotted out to meet people her father had known in earlier times. _Happier times_ , it was clear, though no one spoke it aloud to Eith. "Ah, you had the right of it, Lor," the grave Alderaanians would tease, "gallivanting off to who-knows-where. Stay longer, next time, will you? And keep your head down."

The closest thing she had to company her own age was Princess Organa herself. Eith had not spent long enough on Alderaan to see Leia Organa in the light that most there held her in. But she knew few teenagers could have had the privilege of listening to her orate firsthand, taking in the political ramifications of her speechmaking, and trying not to get distracted by her elaborate braids.

When Eith got bored during the special sessions of the advisory council, she would start programming her democircuit to track how many of the councilors seemed to be paying attention and asking questions per speaker, and how many were staring into space, daydreaming about nothing in particular. Sure enough, it wasn't just Eith who was normally tuned into Organa's speeches. Despite her young age, the princess normally commanded the floor. She seemed to enjoy looking at the source code, too, until Eith explained it couldn't really be used for detecting possible Imperial hardliners. At that point she would normally ask whether Eith knew how to program "Asteroid Menace" or some welcome diversion from politicking.

Sometimes Organa would offer to show Eith around the arboretums, and Eith would nod along, pretending to have something interesting to say about plants. All too soon, wary guards would redirect their fathers (Organa's exhausted from another day of politicking, Eith's delighting at a bright flower) back to them, and Eith would take her leave.

* * *

Parriv was an apprentice to a hypershort radio tapper, back on Miletin, and when Eith had visited he had delighted to teach her everything he knew. The young women of his municipality had no time to listen to the jump-skip-taps of the hypershorts, he explained; they were too busy rerouting pipes or defending Miletin's larger cities. Eith listened, and promised to keep in touch from the San Tekkas' next post.

When Parriv left for the Imperial Academy a satellcyc later, her parents inquired after _her_ with pity, of all things, and then followed up about it when he never did tap back.

It occurred to her, then, to explain that while she craved the knowledge Parriv taught her, and his friendship just as much, she had not regarded him with longing, nor any of the men of Miletin. Not as she had watched women such as Keal the forester or Wenuo the shipwright.

Eith spoke haltingly, a small chip on her shoulder-what business was it of her parents', really, to know the specifics of her admirations?-but also fearfully. She could not imagine outright rejection, not from people who had travelled and explored and lived among so many different cultures, but if they were to be disappointed that they might not have the son-in-law or grandchildren they might have imagined...

Well, if they were, they made no sign. "We love you," Lor vowed, "and are proud to call you daughter."

"And we are grateful," said Cosshu, "that you feel at liberty to speak with us about anything that weighs on your heart."

Eith snorted, once her throat had freed itself. "'Anything' is a stretch. I don't think I'll be making a habit of reporting back to you on the merits of Ili Wenuo's figure."

"A good anthropologist never says never," Cosshu said, "as a very silly man once told me."

Eith went back to her room with a lighter heart. It had not needed to be an occasion for overdramatization after all, and perhaps the day would not need to stand out.

Until that night, when she heard from across the hallway something she took for her father weeping. Had she so grieved him, that he could not express his disappointment in front of her?

Then her mother was at the door, pleading "Eith, Eith, come quickly," and the horror on Cosshu's face was such that Eith leapt up in a moment. On the holonet was a grim-faced Coruscanti newsreader.

"We have received confirmation," she droned, "that the planet of Alderaan has been destroyed by an unknown superweapon..."

Who had she been, Eith thought, looking at her father's broken sobs, to think that her emotions mattered, even for a day?

* * *

Despite long odds, the Rebel Alliance gained a hard-won victory in battle after battle, restoring some measure of peace to the galaxy. Some. For those who traced their heritage to Alderaan, life could never be exactly the same. And yet, what united these expatriates was no longer a shared identity but its coinciding absence; something had pulled them from their planet on that fateful day. For some it was mere descent; like true cosmospolitans, where their ancestors had happened to be born had had little bearing on the courses of their particular lives for a long time, and the sudden thrust of Alderaan's rubble back into focus felt somewhat arbitrary. Some bore it with guilt. They had not appreciated that part of their lineage while it endured, and as penance, it could no longer leave their consciousness.

As for those who _had_ been born there and been spared by happenstance, reactions were just as mixed. For some, disavowal was the only choice. To identify as Alderaanian was to be dead, so what remained was to be a citizen of the universe. Others recreated old traditions, as if hoping to pass down some shadow of them to their own descendants. Hadn't the monarchy seemed hollow for a long time? Maybe a lifeless echo was the best they could do.

For Lor, there was nothing left to teach, no academy to report back to, no culture to show off. Still, his wanderlust kept him moving, but more as a student than a representative.

Ruwa, a planet on the far edge of the solar system where Miletin's planet orbited, had been experiencing some strange magnetic field reversals. Though he was no exophysicist, Lor nevertheless began a fascinated study while Cosshu worked as a probation officer at a port.

Eith had a much more down-to-planet approach to the scientific curiosities. A far more mineral-rich world than Miletin had been, Ruwa could afford to export advanced droids much more cheaply, and Eith at last had a steady harbor to work on the production of electronic minds. One by one, they began to take shape under her tools, torch and database alike, and it seemed she had found a home worth celebrating not for its own quirks-for there were many suns just as nourishing as theirs in the galaxy, where she might have been as lucky to land-but for what she could do there.

But the planet's idiosyncracies became something less-or more-when Eith ran into a Ruwan who scoffed at the magnetic investigations. "Magnets, huh. It'll be the ancestral spirits, no doubt."

"Spirits?" Eith repeated, trying not to sound overly skeptical.

"Sure. Any time they show up, luck goes sour. And electronicals don't work right."

"I'm not quite sure I understand," Eith admitted. "Do you mean the spirits of the...deceased?"

"Well who else!" said the Ruwan, looking at Eith as if she wasn't very bright. "Only seeing as how the living aren't spirits, exactly."

"And is it...only one's ancestors who have this effect?" she pressed. "Or everyone?"

"How'd I know, it's only Grandmother and Uncle Tymal that I've heard a-whispering and rotting the luck. What would someone else's ancestors be looking at me for?"

"I don't know," Eith stammered, taken off-guard by how nonchalantly the conversation was going. Did dead ancestors really come back to chastise their living descendants so frequently on Ruwa? "What's not to look at?"

"Thanks," blushed the other woman. "I think. I'm Oin Yunri."

"Eith San Tekka."

"A pleasure."

"If you ever wish to continue these explanations, perhaps over dinner, I would be delighted to reach some kind of understanding. I admit I am not a quick study, but I hope to learn much more of Ruwa in time. I have already found it a high-spirited place in the best of ways."

"You only say that because you haven't drunk Ruwan liquor yet."

"Do you recommend it?"

"I'm not that daft," said Yunri.

But she left the door open.

* * *

Yunri could rave in detail about her favorite stew, but wasn't much help in examining most of the holomenu's options; when it came to Ruwan cuisine, Eith was mostly on her own. On the other hand, it wasn't until long after their dinner that Eith realized what had been missing. Yunri was not the first woman she had dated on Ruwa, and the others invariably, out of irrepressible curiosity or obligatory routine, asked what brought her to the planet. One thing had led to another, and then Alderaan's absence had cast another shadow over their meetings.

It only caused her to throw herself more urgently into her partners' stories, laugh gleefully at their jokes, drink deeply of tasteless Ruwan wine. The pride and pain were not hers to feel, she told herself, how dare those pitying women look at her in any sort of consolation, any shame for having said the wrong thing?

But the dark-eyed shaft inspector deemed the distant past an uninteresting topic of conversation, instead sulking about how burdensome it was to have had to remake lunch after accidentally dropping her ingredients that afternoon. (Given her questionable hand-eye coordination, Eith quietly noted, it was no surprise that Yunri had not pursued the Ruwan mining tradition.) As dour as she got about even trivialities, she never told Eith how to feel. With Yunri, Eith felt freer than anywhere on Ruwa, and hadn't freedom been what the war was for anyway?

Other visitors came to the planet, too. Some in a postwar mining boom, some just to visit. Leia Organa, restored to civilian life and with her husband in tow, was delighted to catch up with Lor once again. And then, some time later, another war hero arrived, drawn perhaps to the mysteries of Ruwa. After taking down an Empire, what trouble could a magnetosphere or two be?

"No skin off my back," muttered Yunri, as Eith tried to steal a kiss from her, "so long as they're not drafting pilots. I like both feet on the ground, me."

* * *

Luke Skywalker was nothing like Eith expected. He met all of Yunri's expectations, of course, because those had been calibrated at "not drafting pilots for some foolhardy rebellion thing," the galaxy having no need of rebellion, and this duly satisfied she took him in stride.

But the rest of the time, when he wasn't trying to learn the ways of the Force or, well, whatever it was _Jedi_ did, he wasn't busy, wasn't chased by drooling admirers. He had time even for ordinary people like Eith! Maybe that wasn't fair, she wasn't seeing him during his so-called "work" hours. But as hobbies went, he seemed to get as competitive about watching amateur speeders as anyone, and even was content to smile at droids on the workbench.

"Could you make prosthetics out of those limbs?"

"No," Eith flatly explained. "These days programming is distributed noncentrally, so unless you want a leg that thinks for itself..."

"Might be useful," he said thoughtfully. "Kick your enemies and disclaim any responsibility."

Had Luke _Skywalker_ just _joked_ to her?

Shaking his head, he went on, "No, probably not worth the risk. At any rate, do you do repairs here?"

"Not regularly, but I'd be happy to refer you." Like he wouldn't be able to get any service he wanted anywhere.

He nodded. "I'd appreciate that. I believe my R2 unit needs its coolant reconfigured."

"We can run some diagnostics, at the least!"

Sure enough, the very next day Eith was able to tell him that the slowdown he'd witnessed was nothing more than the coolant issue he'd suspected all along, but that if he was getting R2-D2 repaired anyway he should also look into latent wheel deterioration. "Thanks," said Luke, "that shouldn't be an issue."

Shouldn't be an issue? To go deal with someone else, who would be too slack-jawed to do much of anything for a day or two? But, Eith checked herself, it was probably more straightforward than handling glitches in the middle of a war. For all she knew, hers was a bigger port than where he'd come from, and she didn't ask. Not all heroes erupted, fully-forged, from the center of the galaxy.

Then there was Yunri, who somewhere along the line had mentioned her grandmother and Uncle Tymal to Luke. "I believe you," he'd said quietly. "This isn't the first I've heard of such things in Ruwa, you're just the first person brave enough to confide in me."

"Brave? Me? Nah, I don't think you quite got it, right, see," Yunri had gone on. Patiently, he'd heard her out, taking in how cowering at odd electronic breakdowns was hardly bold at all, just a retreat to routine as Yunri would have it.

"There might be things you can do, to make it easier on both of you if you start hearing voices again. Would you be interested?"

"Easier? As if I'd need defending from my dear old granny?" asks Yunri. "Only she's been in the ground nine planecycs, I think I can stand her whining about how I'm pouring the tea all wrong."

"Well, consider it," he shrugged.

* * *

But it was Eith who would bring up the subject of meeting with Luke again. Several sattelcycs later, Yunri had crashed her speeder bike and taken some time off to recover. He'd offered to bring meals over, but she'd politely declined. "Eith should be able to make a droid to go do that. I hope, anyway!"

And Luke had laughed. "I wouldn't put it past her."

"Go see if he can teach you any exercises," Eith suggested, once she'd heard about it. "I don't want you getting hurt again."

"All Ruwa did for the Empire was make techy bits, and that's the way I like it. I don't want to get caught up in the likes of any war-hero tomfoolery."

"Not _those_ kinds of exercises. I mean, something to help you focus."

Yunri considered it. Luke was her friend too; he'd at least tried to help her, in his way. "Suppose it can't hurt. At least if it goes wrong the medipost should be used to me by now."

Both Yunri and Luke walked away from the experimentations "unhurt" in the sense that nobody's arms had been chopped off, nor had anybody's deceased grandmother harassed them overmuch. Luke pronounced the encounter a rousing success and expressed his hopes that Yunri would meet with him again whenever she felt healthy and interested. Yunri considered the afternoon a dismal failure.

"He had me hold one of those _lightsabers_ , Eith, can you imagine the very nerve! Almost fell over my own feet!"

"But you didn't," said Yunri. "Er, did you?"

"Sort of-in a manner of speaking-well first he wanted me to see whether I could pick myself up again just by glaring, a bit. I tell you, I was glaring, all right."

"Sounds like your pride took the worst of it."

"I should say so! Me, waving a lightsaber around like some Jedi?"

"It glowed and all?"

"Oh it'd have glowed for anyone, Eith, _you_ could have done that..."

"You should show my dad, he'd be interested."

"Eith, you're being silly. It was a farce, that's all."

Eith dropped the subject, instead glad to notice that Yunri's leg did look a bit stronger than when they'd met last. It wasn't until Luke dropped by the droid shop that she dared to bring up the subject again, and Luke just sighed. "I was hoping to ask you the same thing. I think Yunri really does...exemplify the best of Ruwa, but if she's not interested in learning more about what she can do it would be tyranny to impose it on her. She'd certainly be in excellent, if willful, company."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind," he said. "Show me what's new in auditory processors."

* * *

Eith projected calm. It was a simple question, in the grand scheme of things, even if it might catch certain people off-guard. Just a matter of getting it over with.

"Will you marry me?"

"No?"

She just laughed. Trust Luke to be forthright in his misunderstanding; of all the planets they had ventured among, for all the passion in her work he saw in her, he was clearly as uninterested in romance of any kind as she would be in courting men. "Oh, not like _that_ ,, you silly. No-that is to say-Yunri proposed to me."

"And...I should hope you accepted?" _Took her long enough_ , was probably the less politic translation, but he'd put on a guise of patience well.

"Of course," Eith blushed.

"Then I am very happy for you both," he smiled. "But I don't see what this has to do with me, unless you want someone to spoil the astromechs on your honeysatellite."

She gave an excited nod. "It would mean a lot to my father, I believe, to have a...pious officiant, who knows the old ways."

"The old ways? Look around you, I know little-"

"I understand. As does Yunri, of course. But would you consider, in whatever way you think best? A short speech, something to wish us well."

"Careful, now. I'm no politician. But a simple blessing? I suppose I can do that."

"Thank you! We truly appreciate it."

He nodded. "If I could meet with your father sometime, perhaps he can tell me what old traditions he remembers. Many are perhaps myths, or unhelpful superstitions, but others might be worth preserving."

"Of course," said Eith. "I'm sure he'd be honored."

"If he's-" Luke broke off "-as honest a friend as you, I'd be very grateful for the opportunity to meet with him as well."

Eith sensed the clumsy redirect, but thought little of it. She had a wedding to plan.

* * *

Though his memories of the Jedi were of leaders in the community, Lor did not find anything involving them officiating civil ceremonies. Indeed, the very suggestion seemed laughable from what sources he could trace. But that didn't stop him from continuing to research other connections to the Force. Nor did it deter Luke from composing his own rituals, borrowing what Cosshu suggested from Miletin and occasionally mixing in some suggestions from the far side of Ruwa, where he'd been visiting more and more alongside some crystal-farming expedition.

"May you be to each other the sun that centers, that abounds in illumination and warmth; the wings that propel to new directions; the waterway that bears nourishment and renewal; and the lodestone that always points true," he recited, that afternoon in Stenbre City. Yunri had stood proud, drawing herself up to her full height and never flinching as Eith leaned in for a kiss, and their loved ones beamed. If Yunri's dear old grandmother was whispering there too, critiquing the youth of the day and their choice in gown colors, the dazzling bride never spoke of it.

The blessing was fulfilled; for several happy years in Ruwa Eith and Yunri thrived. Eith's new hoverdroid prototype, PT-37, buzzed around the upper stories of their home, and Yunri almost never crashed into it. Cosshu eventually stepped back from her work at the probation office, while Lor continued to correspond with farther and farther-flung contacts.

Then came the day when Yunri finally broached a subject Eith had on occasion considered, but rarely mentioned since their marriage. It was always dicey bringing up topics that might risk shaking Yunri from her comfort zone-better to let her remember old discussions in her own time. "You know, we _could_ start a family. If you wanted."

"This is a family! You, me, and whatever PT-37 drags in."

"I mean, we're not stuck with Miletinner tech. We could find a donor, there's probably a database somewhere, and have a medidroid implant one of us."

"You'd be all right with that?"

"Can't tell yet if I'm healthy enough for it, can I? But every day I've lived with you's felt more and more like home, and I think it'd be a brilliant home for a baby, too."

They talked and talked some more, and it wasn't long before Eith could say without hesitation that all things being equal, she did want to be a mother if she had the chance. But the thought of relying on the aid of a stranger gnawed at her. "What if our child had a random sibling somewhere they didn't know about? Or dozens, hundreds of them?"

"Don't be absurd, it'll be _ours_."

"Oh you know what I mean. Or what if the donor had some inherited diseases, that hadn't been tested for..."

"Ask one of your colleagues, then."

Eith said she would, gave her word. She really did mean to, there was just never a good moment. What would have happened if she brought it up and someone said "no"-that they didn't want to mix work and their personal lives, that they had some genetic risk factors that really were none of her business to go prying into anyway? How could things ever go back to normal?

So it was in irritation a sattelcyc later that Yunri snapped at her to "talk to Luke, already."

"What?"

"He's been trying to track you down, and I'm sick of playing interceptor, that is for sure and certain."

"I don't understand."

"Just talk to him," said Yunri, so Eith sought out the holomessenger.

* * *

"So," said Luke. "Yunri says you could use a favor?"

" _Yunri_ has been talking to you? About, er, our personal life?"

"Didn't say what it was for, just said I should come find you."

"I don't mean to be a distraction, I'm very sorry. How are things?"

"Things are fine! Most of my...students right now...are adults. They can handle themselves. Yunri is welcome to visit any time, by the way. I mean, so are you, but she's welcome to _visit_."

"I think messaging you has already fulfilled her quota of adventure."

"Really, it's nothing," he urged.

Eith didn't think Yunri was going to change her mind any time soon. But then again, she would certainly be candid enough if she ever chose to do so; Yunri had gotten over the awe of meeting a galactic savior more easily than Eith, who took standing on ceremony as something to resent, could handle.

Either way, that wasn't the point. They were back on friendly terms, and there was nothing for it. "I'm not sure what exactly she's told you, but the two of us were hoping to start a family."

"That's wonderful! You'll be great parents!"

"Well, we hope. The issue is, I'm not sure we can rely on the DNA banks to minimize potential genetic disorders, never mind untraceable relatives on _one_ planet to say nothing of thousands. The lack of standardization is appalling!"

Luke laughed. "There are risks in everything. Don't let your fear consume you."

"We won't. But _if_ there was a better way, only then, I'd be silly not to consider all options."

"I don't think this is something the Force can help Yunri with."

"Oh!" said Eith. "No. What she meant was, would you ever consider donating your DNA?"

Luke paused, and Eith found herself grateful for the occasional holomessenger static. She could blame any awkwardness on a delay. But he did answer, slowly. "For you and Yunri, I would consider it."

"I don't mean to put you on the spot-"

"I do not think it will be possible to get an exhaustive medical history, but I haven't had any serious inheritable illnesses. Nor have my living relatives, that I know of."

"Well, that's as much as I can ask for, isn't it?"

"Eith, no, be careful. Just because a child who takes after me might be of sound health does not mean they would not present their own set of...challenges and opportunities."

"Did you copy that cliche from some school wall?"

"Excuse me," Luke said in mock offense, "my academe will only trade in our own cliches, thank you very much."

Eith paused, then remembered Luke's gathering collection of friends and colleagues, from farther and farther across the galaxy. "You're not kidding."

"I think any child of Yunri's would face the same questions. Yunri has made her own decisions, and seems very happy with her life, but I don't think either of you are hard-hearted enough parents to try to preempt your child's future before it's even begun."

"I don't think we're hard-hearted enough to abandon a baby on a school halfway across the planet, either."

More laughter. "You have me there. No, there can be a more reasonable balance, discovery without obsession."

"You believe so?"

"Come and see the students here, ask them how they study, and when. All of them have their own ways of making it work."

"This is just your way of trying to trick Yunri again, isn't it?"

"Hey," he teased, "you started it!"

"Tell me this; you said that for us you would consider it. Are there people you wouldn't consider this for?"

"You are my friends," Luke explained, "and as I said, I trust you to be good parents. No matter how the process works out, the child you raise will be both of yours under the law, as is just. I would do no such favor for someone or someones who I thought would renege their commitments and leave me to raise a child I had not prepared for-I'm afraid I'd make a rather terrible father."

"Don't sell yourself short!" Eith snorted. "Of all people."

"Well, we all have our faults," he muttered, "but I'd appreciate if you didn't go blabbing about my deep-seated insecurities to the press."

"Of course," she said. "What are friends for?"

* * *

In the end they decided it was safer to have Yunri be the one who passed down her family name, and Eith be the one who went under the medidroid's spindle. If their baby was already chancing a high likelihood of Force-sensitivity on one side, there was no need to skew the potential even further.

She found she missed the workbench when, several months later, she stepped aside. "Maybe we can both work less when you're ready to go back," Yunri suggested.

"Maybe?" Eith teased. "What part of _your_ job do you actually like?" What with all of Yunri's complaining, it was a legitimate question, though Eith suspected she was getting a one-sided view of the situation.

Yunri thought it over. "Lunch is cheap."

Despite all the accouterments that the mediport provided, labor was painful and messy, and Eith felt a newfound respect for the generations of her foremothers who had managed in places remoter than Miletin. Yet when it was done, she had a second wind, staring down at a newborn girl with hair dark like Cosshu's.

"Rey," said Eith. "Oin Rey?"

"Such a short name!"

That was the way of things on Alderaan. When your family name so often came in two parts, your didn't need to be ostentatious and need many more syllables for yourself. "What do you think?"

"She's a little girl," said Yunri, holding her up for a holopic. "But she has room to grow, don't you? I think it fits. Hello, Rey!"

Rey wailed, and a scuttling medidroid insisted on measuring her. Eith leaned back again, feeling another wave of exhaustion roll over her, this one mingled with relief. They had been a family before, of course, but already she felt a new sense of purpose, and above all, simpler than any heroics or mysticism, joy.

* * *

When Lor came to visit, Yunri was frequently mystified by his conversations with Eith. Some allusions would just fly above the head of anyone who didn't have the rooting in Alderaan culture; a fast trip through hyperspace might be "as crooked as Bail Organa's trade dealings"-completely on the level. Other in-jokes were even harder to explain. A less pleasant driver might "stall as long as the barber of Ivels did at holochess," which would send Eith into uproarious laughter as she waved off any attempt at sharing the amusement. And when he insisted that he'd "just sleep on the couch, it can't be as terrible as Hoth," it induced wordless groaning such that even Rey, by then a toddler, had to ask what was wrong. They wrote it off as a fact of life. It was just what parents, and children, did.

So likewise, Eith was similarly unconcerned when Rey and Yunri began developing _their_ own private routines. After all, Yunri had decided to work a little less than half-time, with Eith working a little more, and consequently spent a lot of time around the house, taking care of their growing daughter. Both of them had their own bedtime rituals and both were engaged in her upbringing, so it wasn't a surprise to hear Rey giggling along at Yunri humming in the kitchen or banging pots and pans together, or shrieking when they accidentally fell down.

But over the course of a few months, the accidents started stringing together. There was that time Rey fell off her tricycle, and bounced up without a scratch while the trike froze in place. The time Yunri burned fish for herself and Eith, and left Rey's vegetables perfectly cooked. The time PT-37 did a series of cartwheels it had certainly never been programmed to do.

"I'd need to see for myself," Luke explained.

"Do you get to leave often?" Yunri asked, not entirely able to hide her concern.

"Well," he went on, "I can sort of set my own schedule."

So he dropped by to find Rey chirpily cruising along on the patched-up trike, under Yunri's watchful eye. "Hello!" Rey called, busily swerving back and forth along the edge of the street.

"Hello there!" Luke waved. "Fine set of wheels you've got there!"

"Beep beep! Wanna horn," she elaborated.

"Say thank you," Yunri advised.

Rey was a little miffed about her imposed bedtime when her parents' cool friend had come to visit, but put up with it once it seemed like conversation was going to be about boring adult things like the reconstituted Senate. Only once she was sound asleep did talk shift to her future.

"She would be younger than most of the others, yes," said Luke. "But that doesn't rule it out. A sattelcyc on, a sattelcyc off, maybe. I'd be happy to help with transportation if that would make the logistics feasible."

"Would you do that for any child her age?" Yunri asked.

Luke hesitated, and finally said, "No, but let me be up-front about that. I'd be happy to shuttle anyone _on Ruwa_ back and forth, age doesn't matter. Her strength-and our friendship-doesn't make me any more willing. But I would rather not leave everyone else behind to make the jump through hyperspace every sattelcyc."

"That's fair," said Yunri."

"She's just about old enough to go off to primeredu," said Eith. "We wouldn't keep a child out of the schooling that was best for her, even if we thought we knew better. Would we?"

Yunri gave a long pause, she and Luke sizing each other up with well-honed curiosities Eith still could not break into. "Three sattelcycs, maybe. Until she's ready to enroll at the primeredu here. Then we'll see how it's going."

"That seems plenty fair to me," said Eith.

"If it works for you," said Luke.

Rey woke up the next morning full of questions. Was Luke's school up in the stars? (No.) Were there aliens there? (A few.) Could PT-37 come? (Technically there was no reason why not, but PT-37 liked it at home best, where Mama could fix it up quicker.) Would the others help her learn how to read and write? If they wanted to, said Luke, there was no reason why not.

" _Really_?" Yunri blurted.

"I'm not going to force them. I daresay some of them won't be thrilled at the prospect of entertaining a student of her age, but some of them will probably find it amusing."

"Your students?" Eith asked.

"Rey's classmates," Luke corrected her gently. "Here, do you want to see my helispinner?"

"You sure you're not going?" Eith teased, once Rey had eagerly followed him outside.

Yunri hesitated. "Can't," she decided, "Luke makes _terrible_ lunch."

All too soon they were hugging Rey, interrupting her quest to learn what every button on the helispinner did. "We'll come see you really soon," said Yunri, "and-"

"You'll have learned a lot!" said Eith. "How to spell your name and everything. I bet the others will show you."

"We love you so, so much!"

"Love you too!" said Rey. "Hey, if PT-37 tried to race us, what would happen?"

"Well," Luke punched at the engine, "I think it would have home-course advantage inside your house, I don't think your moms would let me fly there."

"Uh-huh. And, at your school, is there droid races?"

"Not very often. Can you run faster than a droid?"

"Not a flying one. But if it walks, then maybe..."

* * *

Two sattelcycs had come and gone. Luke had taken the helispinner to scout for crystals in an unstable magnetic region far from the school.

And Kylo Ren, newly-forged apprentice to Supreme Leader Snoke of the First Order, carried out a massacre.

The dead lay at his feet, struck down by his lightsaber. They were as uniform in death as they had been diverse in life, a tribute to the motley crew that had assembled to study with Luke. Some were old enough to be grandparents, others adolescents like Ren. Some men and some women, some humans and many other species besides.

One more victim remained, and he could count his work complete. Oh, it would have been a greater triumph to destroy his uncle, too, but Snoke had told him to wait until the school was left defenseless before annihilating his fellows. That could come later.

Ren readied his lightsaber, feeling the Force surge within him. And then, out of the silence that had fallen upon Ruwa, he heard a voice.

"Kylo Ren?"

"Yes?" he said, opening himself up to the Force beyond him.

"So that is the name you let yourself be reached by. I feared it was almost too late..."

"What?" he asked. It was not the voice of his master that he had heard and obeyed so many times. It was, he realized, a voice he had never heard from any living soul.

"Listen to me. Know my will, and do it."

Suddenly, Ren dared to hope. "Grandfather?"

Snoke had promised him that his latent power to speak with the ghosts of those who had walked the galaxy before him, great masters of the Force like his own grandfather, would mature once Ren began training under the Supreme Leader. After studying with Luke for years he had never once heard an echo of Force ghosts, and he eagerly threw himself into his studies in the hopes that Darth Vader might speak to him. Yet never had it paid off, until that moment.

"Yes," said Anakin Skywalker, "it is I. You must listen carefully."

"But why have you come _now_ , of all times?"

"It concerns the child, Rey. She is-" For a moment, the ghost's voice seemed to break off, as if caught in a high wind, or trapped behind a wall, but it returned with a new fervency, "of my blood. And thus, yours too."

"Did Snoke send you?"

"Snoke...would be pleased to have another Force-sensitive apprentice someday. Surely you have sensed that she has great strength. But for him to even have the chance, she must be kept alive and unharmed."

"If you will it."

"Take her someplace far from here, where she will be safe. If anyone asks, you need only say that you are her kindred. Then you may return to Snoke."

"I promise. But Grandfather, when will you speak to me again?"

Anakin hesitated. "I will not rest from speaking to you, grandson. The Force only knows when you will listen."

* * *

"I should have been there," Yunri repeated.

"Now you sound like Luke's silly holomessages," Eith snapped. Since his rueful transmission, he had not returned any of their attempts at making contact. "You don't blame _him_ , do you?"

Yunri muttered something incomprehensible.

"What? You're allowed to, that's fine."

"No, I don't. But I-was her mother, that's not the same..."

"None of us could have known."

"Still, I should have gone."

"To die with her?"

"It's not fair that I'm still alive."

"I can't ask you to live for me," said Eith, "but can't I ask you to live _with_ me? Didn't you promise me that?"

"What good are promises in a day like this?"

"Only as good as those who make them, and I still trust you. Call me naive, but I do."

They mourned for a spell, and their mourning never left so much as subsided. But when Yunri found she could face the days again, she found too that her old fears had receded. In the end, there was nothing tying her down to Ruwa. She could stomach any change without blanching further, with Eith by her side.

That wasn't to say that a new life in the new republican megapolis didn't have its own set of problems. Traffic was terrible, and there wasn't much space to let PT-37 fly free. Once Yunri decided that translating architectural codes into four different scripts was a nightmare, she quickly settled back into the routine of complaining about work.

But people were people everywhere, too, and that wasn't such a bad thing. Hosnian politicians loved outsourcing their work to drones, and there was always work to keep Eith on her toes. Lunch on any given day might feature a mix of foodstuffs from across the galaxy, fresh and concocted into something new. And countless neighbors near and systemwide seemed to have the same perspective as them; not quite from the capital system itself, not exactly from anywhere worth going on and _on_ about, but still partners in a growing republic, still hopeful they could build something new, together.

* * *

After Cosshu died of old age, Lor took to the stars again. That time, he settled down among a group who devoted themselves to the mysteries of the Force-studying it, venerating it-all without having any ability to use its power.

At first part of him found it strange, even as another found it a relief. Why look up to those with a talent he could never hope to come by, forever making himself feel less-than-capable?

Yet while he could not answer that question, he gradually came to feel grateful for the sense of ritual the community provided. Beginning the day with songand tracing labyrinthine patterns in sand at nightfall lent him a structure that the constant voyages and explorations had never provided, that he had not even thought to look for.

He prided himself on his austerity, not speaking of it, for speaking would be overproud. But watching the humility that set into his fellows among the faithful, he knew they held themselves to the same standard. And dimly, he knew too that there were many more who went with little, not out of virtue, but because they had no choice.

But he did not, could not, know that across the planet, his own kindred was making do on what she had, with less to scrape by than she hoped for day to day. And yet she endured with far more ability in her heart, with more relations honoring her memory, than even she could dream of knowing.

The galaxy rolled on, light from distant suns could only be seen on delay. And yet Lor San Tekka, who knew as well as anyone that planets did not stay put, dared to begin mapping it as if it was a divine calling.

* * *

This technically makes a series of four loosely related TFA fics all taking titles from the (loosely related) more optimistic Pete Seeger cover of "Both Sides Now." Didn't exactly plan on taking this long to complete this headcanon, but glad it's done now. :)


End file.
